Thursday, April 22, 2010

The hockey world has been awash in Canucks conspiracy rumours over the last 24 hours, opining that Gary Bettman has it in for Canadian teams and has rigged the system in favor of the sun-belt, and that Mike Murphy is a Kings homer who is completely incapable of separating his personal feelings from his profession. This mostly erupted out of the terrible call made by video review on Daniel Sedin's "kicked-in" goal, as nicely summarized by The National Post and Puck Daddy.

The latest wrinkle is Gary Bettman's own apology (not in the actual "saying you're sorry for a completely brutal call" sense) for the controversy, in which he suggested that Mike Murphy's inability to defend the no-goal call was because he was tired. Perhaps, and this is just a suggestion, it would be a good idea to have a video review team on the west coast, where they might be still awake enough not to interpret twisting a toe as a "distinct kicking motion?" Just throwing that out there.

As for us at Pass It To Bulis, we've made it pretty clear what we think about the disallowed goal and the questionable officiating. But a conspiracy? That's absurd, insulting, and all the other things Gary Bettman had to say.

There's no conspiracy: the officiating and decisions from the NHL front office have been universally terrible.

This has been happening for some time now and it's not necessarily the referees fault. More and more decisions are being taken out of their hands, from the automatic delay of game penalty for clearing the puck over the boards to the automatic double-minor for drawing blood with a high stick. Having a second official on the ice was meant to lower the number of missed calls, but it instead seems to have increased the number of phantom calls. Video review was designed to overturn an on-ice official's decision if there is conclusive evidence. Instead, Daniel Sedin's goal is disallowed on the flimsiest of reasons. The video review team is meant to be as unbiased as possible, yet Mike Murphy, a former Kings player and coach who has gone on the record as saying he would like the Kings to win the Stanley Cup, is the Vice-President of Hockey Operations and was in charge of the video review during the Kings-Canucks game.

This is not an issue with the NHL favoring one team over another; this is an issue of the rules being unclear and the NHL front office being incompetent at anything other than covering their own asses.

3 comments:

Here's the thing: it is entirely impossible for somebody to be both a complete idiot and an evil genius. Complete idiots bleed ignorance; evil geniuses plot conspiracies. I'm going to call this the Bush Conundrum, as people would often lambast George Bush with claims that he was dumber than Big Moose and more conniving than Reggie Mantle. It's one, or it's the other.

Gary Bettman is a complete idiot. A conspiracy is thus not within the realm of his capabilities. Rather than complaining about him and his conspirators desperately trying to screw the Canucks out of a second-round berth, I would ask that we simply hold these dunderheads accountable when they make boneheaded decisions. And they will. Regularly.

The comment about the time of night is a perfect example. Bettman admits there's a problem with the war room being in a time zone three hours ahead. He implies, by this, that these games matter less. It is therefore implicit that this is simply a bad management structure and whoever put it in place is a bonehead. An evil genius doesn't whip his dick out and hit it with a hammer like that.

There's got to be some kind of conspiracy. Or at least a conscious bias towards the East. Just look at NHL.com's top 10 goals. No Sedin plays. Which wouldn't have been an issue if 2 days after they compile the list, in the last game of the regular season, Daniel Sedin scores what is arguably the greatest goal of the year. And we rarely see any props for Vancouver as a whole despite having the Art Ross trophy winning Henrik Sedin. The East is too busy living with it's head up its butt to give two dumps about what happens in the Pacific time zone. I hate Gary Bettman and I hope he eats ALL the dicks.

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